Hottest Android news and rumours for week ending January 18

After a CES week during which the Android world was all a-twitter over a device that wasn't even revealed at the show, the previously hyperactive Galaxy S IV rumour mill has quieted down, mostly. It's likely to only be a momentary respite, however, as the device is heavily tipped to be released at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.

Perhaps the biggest news on the most hotly anticipated Android device so far in 2013 is that an ostensible screenshot of mobile benchmarking results has been published by a Japanese-language blog), which points out that the 1.8GHz CPU speed matches up with Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa eight-core SoC. (More on the Octa later.)

Given the source, it's important to remember that this should be taken with many grains of salt - even the inclusion of the point about the Exynos 5 Octa could easily be read as a little too circumstantially convenient. (Like Manti Te'o confessing to Lance Armstrong on Oprah or something.)

Still, I can't deny that the pairing of Samsung's two biggest headline grabbing topics makes sense. We'll see what happens (probably) at MWC at the end of February.
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Speaking of the Exynos 5 Octa, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs is unsurprisingly not a fan, according to a report from Unwired View. Essentially, he told reporters in China yesterday, Samsung is just covering for the fact that the four high-performance Cortex-A15 cores drain a ton of power by jamming four slower but less demanding Cortex-A7s into the SoC alongside them, and attempting to reap a publicity windfall by boasting about their eight-core processor.

While Jacobs is correct in noting that all eight of the Octa's cores won't operate at the same time, I'm not sure why he's saying this means the SoC is going to suck. OK, so it's not a "true" eight-core SoC, but the idea of using the low-power cores for light work and switching to the A15s for more serious tasks still makes sense, and could well back up Samsung's claims of improved battery life and better performance. Seems like fairly ineffectual spin to me.
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The Nexus 4 official wireless charger has appeared on the site of Norwegian store Dustin Home, providing a slick pad on which to charge the Nexus 4 that you still probably don't have. Presumably, this means that it'll become available soon in the U.S., but this is a product release story involving the phrase "Nexus 4," so who really knows?

But wait! The Nexus 4's availability problems will soon be a thing of the past, according to an LG executive who spoke to Challenges.fr Wednesday. LG France director of mobile communication Cathy Robin says production of the Nexus 4 is due to increase by mid-February, which could ease the supply crunch. As of this writing, both the 8GB and 16GB models are still sold out on the Play Store.

Android Police has what it says is an internal Sprint document, which asserts that the company plans to offer a $US400 device credit to new family plan customers who port at least one line in from a competitor. The deal's supposedly set to roll out tomorrow, so you don't have long to wait, if you're interested.

Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.

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